The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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As a tribute to the first responders, victims and families of those missing in the partial condo collapse, Miami Beach announced Thursday it will replace its originally planned fireworks celebration with a moment for residents to “shine a light in a symbolic gesture of unity,” according to a city press release. ... Miami Beach residents will have the option to mark Independence Day in a way that may feel more reflective of the ongoing tragedy and families’ grief and hope. —Miami Herald, July 2, 2021
Digging into the smoldering
ruins, looking for lost people,
their ashes have drifted into
the crushing water by now,
the rescuers are seeking
shadows, do their souls
enter the spirit of our
language, will we hear
them inside any thought
we utter?
George Salamon survives in St. Louis, MO and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, and The New Verse News.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Prosecutors in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's accused murderers filed a flurry of new motions in recent days, including 15 in just the past 24 hours. Among them, the state's District Attorney's Office is asking the judge to allow a three-hour closing argument (an hour longer than allowed) and to show jurors cell phone video of Arbery's killing during opening statements. Arbery was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, after three men chased him through the coastal Georgia neighborhood of Satilla Shores. Travis and Greg McMichael are charged with first-degree murder along with their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined the chase and recorded the incident on his cell phone. All three have pleaded not guilty. … The state has filed previous motions seeking to keep out evidence of Arbery's diagnosed mental illness or his prior run-ins with police. The judge has not yet ruled on any of the motions. The next court date is July 22 at 10 a.m. —First Coast News, July 2, 2021
1. I Sing For Ahmaud
I sing for my sanity
At night when I cannot sleep
When the darkness plays an endless loop
Of yesterday’s tragic news
And I sing for the young black men
Daily dying in our bleeding streets
And I sing and pray for the mothers
Whose tears stoke the flames of justice
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
Yes I sing and pray that they’re something more
Than the heartless, mindless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
I sing for my sanity
And pray for a savior like Dr. King
To heal this deeply wounded world
With wisdom, peace and love
Yes I sing for the martyrs
That their blood will finally cleanse this world
And slake the thirst of hate
For now and all-time
Now I sing and I pray
Try to understand the fear the killers feel
Why they grasp the coward’s last line of defense
The trigger of a gun
I sing and pray that there’s something more
That the mindless, heartless head at the White House door
Greeting millions marching for justice
With tear gas and vicious dogs
Yes I sing, I sing, I sing
I sing for this country’s sanity
2. Chanty For Ahmaud
The sunbeams and shadows thread through the Spanish moss
As the young men run under the live oak trees
It’s 1820 and all is well
Cause young black men know where they should be
At work for the master crushing shells from the beach
Making tabby all day, yes that’s their play
Hang your head low and shuffle your feet
Building master’s big house on Satilla’s white shore (and they sing)
“Ho, Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for the master
Ho. Ho. Yes scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
Now it’s two thousand twenty, see what we’ve lost
Young black men forgot their place in this world
They dare to run on Satilla’s white shore
Without a white man to set their course
Sorry to say it had to be done
Lesson well-taught with an old shotgun
Soon we’ll forget and go back to our ways
When young black men knew their place (and they’ll sing)
“Ho. Ho. Scrape and pound.
Happy at work for master
Ho. Ho. Yes I scrape and pound
Crushing shells for tabby to build Master’s house.”
3. Black Lives Matter
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
He used to run every Sunday down in southeast Georgia
Then one day two white men shot Jesus dead in the street
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Do you know Jesus
After dying in Georgia, she moved up to Kentucky
Asleep in her own bed the police shot her dead
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Finally a cause worth dying for
Black lives matter
Finally a chance to do what Jesus would do
Do you know Jesus
Dead in Kentucky, on up to Minnesota
Policeman put a knee on his neck, he died
Crucify! Crucify! Yes they crucified Jesus again
Black lives matter
Do you know Jesus
4. Little Jimmy’s Eatin’ Some Crow Now
Awake this morning before the cock crowed
I worry, worry, worry bout my battered soul
I can’t stop seeing that black child’s blood
Puddled neath his body and his toy gun
2020 air still stings my eyes
It’s summer 21, now who will die
Don’t know why some folks continue to hate
And take delight in passing it along
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
Why? Why? Why?... Hell, I don’t know
And he laughs and laughs into the online sky
Bowtie man with the crazy eyes
Living to spread hate as far as he can
He’s the darling of every other Christian man
“When should a black man jog down the street.”
“If he’s in south Georgia... never. “
“How do you celebrate Black History month.”
“Watermelon, breakfast, supper and lunch. Whooo Weeee.”
It’s the damnest way to live in this world
Bowtie man telling cute jokes
“Why’d the little negro bring his toy gun to town?
To give police some target practice.”
“Whooowee,” says the bowtie man, “...that little Jimmy’s eatin some crow now.”
The work of Richard Lawson of Brunswick, Georgia has been published in Fine Lines.
6. Something that is increasing in number. Noun. Plural.
7. Something else that increases in number. Noun. Plural.
8. A Whole number. Greater than six and less than eleven.
9. A whole number. Less than six
10. An antonym for permanent.
11. A synonym for the adjective just
12. Another word for exonerated
Breaking news alerts proliferate.
Prosper, too. Prime time menus
of mixed reviews mingle and morph
amongst clam covered
palms and sweat stained pits.
Stomachs ache
of __1__ and __2__.
Memories of __3__ fade into
forever setting suns as storm
clouds crystallize. Frowns
form. Red and blue ink
blur. Times New Roman
font crosses paths with Lato.
Wet signatures dry. Personals
pay final respects. Records
are released.
Wild prey wait on nearby wires. Dollars
wait in nearby banks. Electric
energy both watching and waiting.
Lighting strikes in predictable patterns
and on predictable prey.
The vulnerable press. Charge, too.
No matter. Mathematics makes
for logical work and two consonants
(F / R)
and two vowels
(E / E)
yield a limited
number of combinations.
Permutations, too.
Reef(s) hover at or near
the surface of stormy seas.
Barriers built to protect those
in need - __4__
and __5__ weaken
until those in need become
no more than numbers.
Data most revealing.
Most numbers grow -
__6__ and __7__
while others diminish.
Brute force always finds a way
to unlock combinations long
proffered as secure. Sentences
often flip, then flop. __8__ turns
to __9__with a subtle twist.
Zippers release and seams snap.
Nylon curtains drop and faux
satin sheets fall. Silver
linings dissipate.
Accounts empty then fill.
Golden standards have always been tarnished.
Gambling has always been a predetermined
proposition. Printing presses turn out F.R.E.E.
passes as pressed charges turn off the lights.
Light, too. Games systems everywhere.
Not all Aces are pure.
Not all Spades are sacred.
To win is not always ___10___.
To be free, not always __11__.
Hands reveal hidden tricks
and luck turns. Locks turn left
and engines run. Game on
and now over. Energy depleted.
To be free
is not to be __12__.
Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.
A family walks through a field where flags and solar lights now mark the site where more than 750 unmarked graves were discovered at the former Marieval Indian school in Saskatchewan on 26 June. Photograph: Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian, June 30, 2021.
Indigenous groups have called for Canada’s national celebration [on July 1] to be cancelled over the discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked graves, most of which are believed to belong to Indigenous children. —The Guardian, June 30, 2021.
They were taken for the sin of being born
on a continent ripe with riches
the white man claimed
as his manifest destiny.
They were taken for the sin of living
on the land alive with seeds
their parents nurtured
with their own blood.
They were taken for the sin of belonging
to peoples who wrote their names
in rivers, rocks and plains,
their songs on the wind.
They were taken for the sin of listening,
dancing to their own rhythms,
praying to the Creator
in their own tongues.
They were taken for the sin of loving
to snuggle in their elders’ arms,
imbibe their stories
and their dreams.
They were taken to forget the ancestors,
learn settlers’ words and ways,
embrace new gods, surrender
to schools of conquest.
Mothers, fathers refuse to forget
as machines plumb sacred ground
where children lie in unmarked graves,
waiting to be found.
Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa. A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing. Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.
Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis. Alejandro works as an English teacher, having taught at the secondary level for many years. Originally from Argentina, he immigrated to California at an early age. A new collection, The Book of the Unclaimed Dead, published by Main Street Rag Press, is now available on the MSR website. Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his dog, a feisty terrier named Jake.
history equivalent to ancient or medieval history?
Insults began before he finished. Dumb idea.
Worthless. How could Indians who spoke
Algonquin be compared to Cicero or Duns Scotus?
Besides, a new course would reduce enrollments.
Bullhead interrupted the outrage and withdrew
his proposal, walked quietly to the door, then
slammed it shut like a blast of an atom bomb.
No one ever changed their minds, spoke regrets.
Peter Neil Carroll is currently Poetry Moderator of Portside.org. His latest collection of poetry is Something is Bound to Break (Main Street Rag Press). Earlier titles include Fracking Dakota and A Child Turns Back to Wave which won the Prize Americana. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, recently in Cultural Weekly, Freshwater Poetry, Plainsongs, and BigCityLit.
Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92ndStreet Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.
It’s not that they’re screaming. It isn’t pain exactly,
in the market garden, these kohlrabis and cabbages,
these garlic scapes: it’s that they’re in shock. Harvest
is our word, theirs must be apocalypse. But another
word is anthropomorphize and someone told me
once I shouldn’t do it and I believed them and found
the stump of my root dunked in a washbasin and divested
of holy dirt. Now near the end of time
I wish medications were poems, I wish I were floating
over lakewater, skipping silver marbles instead of
saying the new things I say every reluctant day: I’m
on the mend, thanks, thanks, I’m grateful for the
prayer, for the sea urchin, for the red beetle, for
the cabinet of curiosities you sent and for the gig driver
who lost three family members while my heart was
locked behind a thick pandemic door.
The right kind of time traveler would go twenty years back
and plant that tree, but we service-patched cyborgs
haul our untested upgrades in one direction only, toward
the gracious refusal, toward the retirement of connections, until
the building falls in the middle of the night, the slumbering tenants
dreaming of skydiving and waking to astonishment.
Erik Schwab lives in Seattle, WA. Last year he started writing poems for the first time since college, with the invaluable help of a weekly workshop at Community Building Art Works.
Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, educated in the public schools, attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He was a long-time member of the Fresno Poet's Association. Stephen Barile taught writing at Madera Community College and CSU Fresno. His poems have been published in Featured Poets, Santa Clara Review, Kathmandu Tribune, Tower Poetry, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Rue Scribe, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Metafore Magazine, From Sac Literary Journal, The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and Pharos, among others journals.
Dominic Cummings, sacked special adviser to Boris Johnson, has been releasing embarrassing WhatsApp
messages exchanged with his former employer. Cartoon by Howard McWilliam.
Internal emails, swift to write,
Whose speed can spread more heat than light
And tempt a PM in too deep
With words the media used to bleep,
You cheer us when we note with glee.
His post in peril from D.C.
O linen stained with dog-eat-doggery
Put on display in public bloggery,
May you prove fatal in the end
To both buffoon and faithless friend
So evermore we shall be free
Of Tweedle B. and Tweedle D.
Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.
You didn’t show mercy to our old white-bearded fathers
You didn’t show mercy to our wise sisters and brothers
I wish for this slaughterhouse generation to be destroyed
I wish for our notebooks to be no more tainted with blood
I wish that we lose no more our kin and our beloveds
I wish for no more crying, collapsing, tears and pain
I wish that our education be no more cloaked in blood
I wish that we no more be the page of sorrow in the history of the world
I wish that our goals no longer be cut short before their fulfillment
I wish our hills be no more filled with the corpses of students
I wish those living to be coloured no more with red
Aryan Ashory is a 16-year old poet and filmmaker from Afghanistan. She spent two years in Greece, before moving with her family to a refugee camp in Germany. Her poems are in Dari, English, Greek, and German. One of her short films, about her experience of Coronavirus and quarantine in a refugee facility, was among 15 finalists for the Girl Rising Competition and is available here.
“Severe heat and drought the hallmarks of a changing west… Unless people drastically reduce planet-warming emissions, the world faces a future of increasingly frequent and severe environmental disasters: coastal flooding, mass extinctions, deadly hurricanes, uncontrollable wildfires.” —The Washington Post, June 20, 2021. Photo: Boats sit unused in Lake Oroville, Calif., on Tuesday. A severe water level drop in the lake has forced about 130 houseboats to be removed. (Melina Mara / The Washington Post)
